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Najakcharmer -> RE: Vampires (bunked or debunked) (2/26/2008 10:16:37 PM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: beargonewild
Yes we can not prove nor can we disprove the existence of vampires. But someone to discount the possibility of their existence, then they might as well tell the millions of Muslums that Allah doesn't exist. Tell the millions of Wiccans that their Gods and Goddesses do not exit or tell the thousands of Celtic Pagans that druids are a figment of their imagination. Why stop there, tell the millions of Catholics that God is a delusion.
Spiritual beliefs are not the same as claims of physical reality. Ask many folk who have spiritual beliefs, including most of the other Wiccans and Pagans I know, and they will say that the spirit world is not the same as the material world. Believing in the spirit world is fine. Getting it confused with the material world, not so much.
I am a scientist first and foremost, but I also have a personal, spiritual relationship with the Goddess and the God. I do not believe in them as literal physical entities so much as archetypal metaphor for that which I hold sacred. Her great Mysteries to me are revealed best in science and medicine, and I have absolutely no patience for poor logic or a lack of good critical thinking on any subject, religion included. I have a very deep suspicion of any manifestation of religion that insists on replacing, denying or contradicting the physical facts of science. They are two completely different things that can co-exist in the same intelligent mind without conflict.
As to "Celtic Pagans", I'm afraid that Druids *are* a figment of their imagination as they are generally believed in by the modern Neopagan movement. The actual, historical culture that is commonly referred to as "Celtic" or "Druidic" was a whole lot less romantically interesting than the fluff-bunny Wiccan revisionists would like to imagine they were. And from a scholarly perspective, the term "Celtic" is essentially meaningless unless you narrow down the specific time period and geographic area you want to discuss, as the cultures varied quite considerably with time and location over a span of several thousand years and across a good chunk of a continent. In fact a lot of them hated each other, did their best to wipe each other out, and held diametrically opposing beliefs. So which "Celts" and which "Druids" are you talking about? If you're a modern fluffbunny Neopagan, the answer is most probably none of them; you're imagining a fictional romantic construct because you can't be bothered to crack a book on the subject that wasn't written by Tolkien.
Similarly anyone spouting New Age nonsense about how enlightened the "Indians" were had better be prepared to knowledgeably discuss whether they are referring to the matrilineal, nomadic Dineh sheep herders or the Algonquin scalp hunters, and understand how their cultures, beliefs and social structures changed over time and during their interactions with other conflicting cultures. Anyone who is spouting crap about how the "Indians" believed this or that, or how the "Celts" or "Druids" believed this or that, deserves to be hit upside the head with every textbook on the subject they obviously didn't bother to read. If you really don't know what you're talking about beyond foolish and mostly fictional cliches and platitudes, if you have never bothered actually researching what you like to blather on about, it's really better not to.
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